Fluid Dynamics: Charting the Global Wine Market

I’m in Innsbruck today, on my way home from the annual meetings of the American Association of Wine Economists. About 160 of us gathered last week in Bolzano, Italy, which is surely one of the most beautiful wine cities in the world, to ponder the state of the world of wine.

I’ll be writing about the meetings in future posts (and about fieldwork we did while in Italy, too), but for now I want to focus on the conference’s final session, which was on the global wine market.

The gist of the session was that the global wine market is going through a period of seemingly chaotic change (hence the “fluid dynamics” title to this post). Several new trends are emerging and each of them can be tracked, but it is hard to know how they will interact in the global markets.

I’m not sure any one of the speakers (see list below) stressed the uncertainty of the dynamic interaction, but this was the message that came through to me.

Up the Down Staircase in Europe

In Europe, for example, there is some good news in the form of increased wine consumption among young people — a possible reversal in the secular decline in wine consumption in “old world” countries (a group that includes Argentina) which has been responsible in part for the global wine market surplus. A good sign that demographic trends may be changing in a positive way.

On the other hand, there is bad news about the EU wine market reforms that were designed to dry up Europe’s wine lake by rationalizing the wine system there and forcing/permitting wine producers to compete head to head with new world wine companies. The recession’s effects are being used as a tool by anti-reform interests and it now appears possible or likely (depending upon who is talking) that the whole reform program may be ditched in order to stabilize grower incomes.

Although European consumers may be drinking more wine, it is not the wine that the reforms were designed to eliminate, so structural imbalances (and high budget costs) may soon return.

Bulking Up (and Down)

Australia is another dynamic wine region. While wine officials have high hopes for China in the future, the present is problematic. Bottled wine exports (with their higher value added) have dropped quite suddenly and more of the export demand is now being met with lower value bulk wine. This is not a step in the right direction for the long term, of course, although I’ imagine that some Australian producers are happy to export in any form.

Javier Merino from Argentina noted the recent growth in both Chile and Argentina (Argentina is the mirror of Australia, reducing its bulk wine exports and increasing bottle wine sales) as well as the economic problems that both nations face (exchange rate issues in Chile, inflation in Argentina).

China is on (almost) everyone’s mind, of course, as it appears to be one of the major growth areas for the near future, but Brazil and Russia are growing, too, and on the radar for countries with extra wine to sell (which is more or less everyone).

This Changes Everything

But South Africa may be a different story. Nick Vink said that he believes that South Africa’s markets of the future are Africa and India (not Britain and the US) as wine consumption rises in these regions and favorable wine market reforms are implemented (a particular problem in India, I believe, but probably in many parts of Africa, too).

Wine markets shifting to Shanghai? That’s interesting. To Nairobi? That’s very interesting! Nonlinear dynamic systems are very sensitive to initial conditions and the Africa shift (or any of the other changes mentioned here) could very easily “change everything” in faraway corners of the world of wine.

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Here’s a list of the wine economists who spoke at the session on the Impact of the Economic Crisis on the Global Wine Market

Kym Anderson (University of Adelaide, Australia)

Johan Swinnen (University of Leuven, Belgium)

Nick Vink (University of Stellenbosch, South Africa)

Julian Alston (University of California, Davis, USA)

Javier Merino (Área del Vino, Mendoza, Argentina)

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The Wine Economist is going to take a short “Fourth of July” break to give me time to get my notes in order. We’ll be back in a few days with more from our fieldwork in Italy. In the meantime, run out and buy a copy of Wine Wars — it makes great holiday reading.

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3 responses

Certainly, the trend in the Old World producer countries is less bulk wine and higher quality bottled wine, however, domestic markets are unlikely to be big enough to off-set the secular drop in consumption referred to, especially in Spain.

Moreover, the culture of wine in non-producer (or of-late marginal producer) countries, for example Britain, is considerably higher in terms of wine knowledge as compared to the Mediterranean producers, who are very aware of their patrimony but without the technical understanding.

Thus, it will take some time for producer market domestic countries to trade-up and experiment with wines imported from regions they know nothing of. Some loca producers consider imports from other countries should be discouraged! In a direct protectionist bid. However, exposure to other wine styles and traditions is, of course, so important to increase culture and the health of the domestic wine economy.

Their only answer is to export all they can and implicate reforms in an intelligent way, which is so often easier said than done. Today, however, I would say there is no longer the margin for error of the past.

The Wine Economist

What would you get if you crossed the Wine Spectator, America's best-selling wine magazine, with the Economist, the world's leading business weekly? The answer is this blog, The Wine Economist, which analyzes and interprets today's global wine markets. The Wine Economist was named 2015 "Best in the World" wine blog by Gourmand International. Staff: Mike Veseth (editor-in-chief) & Sue Veseth (contributing editor).